Gascon

Gascon is the Romance speech of Gascony and Béarn in south-western France, usually called the most distinctive Occitan dialect but sometimes treated as a language in its own right. It parted early from its sister lengas d'òc with a strong pre-Roman substrate. The land was once the Roman province of Novempopulania, whose Aquitanian inhabitants spoke a language akin to Basque; Gascony and Basque share a Vasconic root still marking Gascon phonetics.

Its varieties run from the Atlantic Landes to the Pyrenean foothills. The Duchy of Gascony, formed in the seventh century, passed with Eleanor of Aquitaine to the English crown in 1152 and became the chief stake of the Hundred Years' War, supplying England with wine and salt until the French reconquest at Castillon in 1453.

Béarn kept its laws and estates as the homeland of Henry of Navarre, who entered Paris as Henry IV in 1594. From the seventeenth century Gascony formed part of Guyenne and Gascony province, francization reducing the native speech to the countryside and Pyrenean valleys.